5.2.14

Panel Discussion: A "Womanhouse" or a Roaming House? "A Room of One's Own."

This Saturday Fisk and I attended a panel discussion led by Mira Schor regarding concerns that were similar to those posed by the original Womanhouse. The panel included Kaitlynn Rendell, Sara Jimenez, Kara Rooney, Vanalynn Green, and Maureen Connor.

Kara Rooney made an excellent analysis of feminists in relation to capitalist culture; women are not longer fighting against a binary world but are facing a new domestic enemy. Women are no longer trying to escape their domestic situations, but are fighting the fear of what we cannot have.

In giving her own introduction, Vanalynne Green noted the ease at which young artists utilize the signifiers of art theory as fodder for their own work, when it is through life that one can begin to create their own signifiers with which to compare to theory. She also suggested that women need money, a notion more simple to embrace than something more complicated.

The conversation of the panel kept returning to the relevancy of economics in a woman's life. It was joked that women just need more money, and while everyone laughed at the lighthearted honesty of the statement, it feels inevitably true.

I would have enjoyed if the conversation had strayed a bit into the social politics of feminism, and I couldn't help but empathize with the gentleman who asked, "what do feminists want from men?" The panel reiterated how equal pay can benefit their economic status, keeping with the same points of their discussion. I agree, but is there nothing to be done socially that can have positive affects for women? The final comments from an audience member, who answered a question regarding the difficulty of repayment of student loans, full time work, and creating artwork, were that women have to find their own fulfillment and create the lives that they desire through action. I couldn't agree more.